"People say we need to be bold," says B.C. NDP leader John Horgan. "And I hear it and I often pull people aside and say, 'What does that mean to be bold?' And they say, 'Fixing a big problem, whatever it might be.'"CHAD HIPOLITO / CANADIAN PRESS Files

VICTORIA — B.C.’s Liberal government limped out of the spring legislative session, struggling to shake off a brewing controversy that threatened to derail its re-election chances just weeks before the start of a campaign.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before.

It was four years ago this month that the Liberals spent the dying days of the legislature being rocked by the so-called “Quick Wins” scandal, in which party staffers, government aides and officials in Premier Christy Clark’s office conspired to use public funds to drum up Liberal votes in key ethnic communities.

The fallout cost a cabinet minister, the premier’s top deputy and a handful of staffers their jobs. Clark finished her 2013 spring legislative session with a grovelling public apology. As Liberal MLAs fled the capital, it looked as though Quick Wins would be the defining election issue.

But it wasn’t. The Quick Wins scandal fizzled out.

What went wrong? Ask the guy who ran the NDP’s 2013 campaign, Brian Topp. In his post-mortem report, he offered important lessons for today’s New Democrats hoping to ride the current cash-for-access, political-donations controversy all the way to the polls on May 9.

In 2013, the NDP dropped Quick Wins after the legislature adjourned in March, figuring voters would remember that Clark’s credibility was shot. Then-leader Adrian Dix preferred to run a “positive” campaign. “This proved to be a terrible misjudgment,” Topp wrote.

The premier regained her footing, rallied around the familiar themes of jobs and the economy, and won re-election. By the time the RCMP got around to charging a longtime liberal operative with breach of trust in 2016, the outrage over the one-time scandal had all but extinguished.

“Our opponent was on the ropes, and we let her get up,” wrote Topp.

“A more aggressive, bloody-minded campaign than the one we conducted, would have nonetheless acted on the traditional political principle that the best time to kick your opponent is when they are down,” he added later in his report.

The NDP believe the Clark Liberals are down again, four years later, on the issue of cash-for-access political donations. If they want voters to care, they’ll have to keep kicking.

The opposition party hammered the government mercilessly on the donation issue during the five-week spring session, ending last Thursday. Yet the public pays little attention to what happens in the legislature before an election.

Most people turn their minds to political issues after the April 11 writ issue, which marks the official start of the campaign. That’s more than three weeks for the NDP to keep cash-for-access alive, and another four weeks until the actual vote. Whatever success the NDP had in the legislature will be a distant memory by May 9, without a concentrated second effort.

The NDP believe the Christy Clark Liberals are down on the issue of cash-for-access political donations.CHAD HIPOLITO /
THE CANADIAN PRESS

NDP leader John Horgan has crafted the bulk of his ongoing messaging around how ordinary British Columbians are left with subpar services, because Clark caters to the whims of donors.

“I think people want to make sure the economy is working for them, not just for people giving donations to the Liberal party,” he said Thursday.

Facing sustained criticism, Clark has flip-flopped. She abandoned a $50,000-a-year party stipend, and last week promised an independent review of the political financing system.

“I’m not an ideologue, and I’m not someone who will never change their mind about an issue when it seems the right thing to do after some debate,” Clark said in an interview Thursday when asked about her shifting positions.

The NDP also has two big advantages they refused to use in 2013: A willingness by Horgan to go negative in the campaign, and an acceptance of help in the form of attack ads from union supporters.

The NDP launched one of its first attack ads Sunday on Facebook, highlighting Clark’s stipend and the RCMP investigation. “Christy Clark’s Liberals: Bought and paid for. Not working for you,” said the narrator.

The B.C. Federation has also run three rounds of attack ads. The B.C. Teachers’ Federation released its own Saturday, outlining cuts and school closures. More ads are coming. Even so, Clark said she thinks voters reset from past controversies once the campaign begins.

“We all start at zero the day the writ is dropped,” she said. “I think what people are going to be talking about and thinking about in this election is the same thing that people talked about in the last election, which is what is going on in their personal lives.”

Horgan said he senses “simmering anger” from the public. “I think it’s time for a change,” he said.

The NDP argued for change in 2013, too. But by flubbing Quick Wins, they lacked the “absolutely compelling, mercilessly prosecuted negative case” to hang on the Liberals, wrote Topp. “Absent a compelling issue that forces an urgent debate about ‘changing politics,’ the public will want to hear about their own pre-occupations, which are about their daily lives — jobs, health care, education, taxes.”

Jobs, health care, education and taxes. Familiar themes upon which countless B.C. elections have been fought and won. The NDP hope to squeeze in one more topic — political donations. The party failed last election to carry its marquee scandal through to the ballot box. Whether it works this time, will depend on how hard New Democrats can kick their Liberals opponents when they’re down in the crucial days to come.

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